If you can spare a minute for irony, visit YouTube and search for "This Will Destroy You Live at Emo's, Austin." That top result (which we've helpfully provided above) is a video uploaded in January that intersperses clips of This Will Destroy You performing in their home state and a brief interview with bassist Donovan Jones and guitarist Jeremy Galindo. At the 35-second mark comes the crucial moment. Jones asks Galindo, "Can we be raw? . . . Fuck post-rock, and fuck being called post-rock." Directly following, on-stage footage captures Jones, Galindo, and company tinkering away at a placid instrumental that thoughtfully, slowly blooms into a texture-heavy tempest — pretty much exactly what qualifies as post-rock.

But Jones's sentiments weren't fleeting. In a May interview with the Dumbing of America, he elaborated: "Fuck post-rock. Namely because there is one or two bands at the head of this classification and all other bands that are embracing that terminology sound very similar to these two bands."

Once that Emo's interview went online, members of After the Post Rock — the genre's most popular discussion forum — assessed Jones's words with varying levels of acceptance. ATPR poster cscc contended, "I don't understand why some bands rebel so much against that label. Try as they might, they'll always be post-rock to me." And ratchett posited, "Post-rock rule number 16: Deny you are post-rock." (There is a lot of truth to rule #16: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai, and Explosions in the Sky have all disowned or eschewed the term in interviews.)

Galindo is aware of the flak launched by Jones's statement. "Some guys in the band feel a lot stronger about it than others. The fact is, we wouldn't be anywhere near where we are if we hadn't written a couple of post-rock CDs. We weren't looking to write post-rock CDs. But, yeah, titles are always going to be lame. You're probably never going to like any title anyone puts on your music, but that's how they connect with it. I don't have a big problem with it. It's just a couple of words."

To judge from what This Will Destroy You have hyped, Tunnel Blanket (set for 2011 release) will shift the four-piece away from the standard associations. Although Galindo says they didn't write to rebel against post-rock, the record's premise is pointedly different. The band took along "probably 30-plus instruments" to the studio instead of the typical 10. That included custom-built pieces. "Some made out of bones," says Galindo. "Others from wood." The material, meanwhile, was constructed out of instrumental loops piled into vast layers.

Tunnel Blanket's morose title refers to an acid trip during which a blanket became "the tunnel takes you to the place where the dead rest." And indeed, the record is driven by the theme of death, which Galindo calls "a personal experience. As far as we are concerned, at the end of the tunnel, there is nothing."

This Will Destroy You have, however, cozied up to a portmanteau to describe this dismal vision: "doomgaze" (doom metal + shoegaze). "It's a very doom-y CD, and there's a few songs that are extremely shoegaze-y, so it fits. It rolls right off the tongue." Even as he says this, Galindo must realize the futility of aligning with another genre. "But I'm sure that as soon as too many people start using it, it'll start pissing somebody off and, y'know, back to square one."

Review: Melt-Banana at Middle East Downstairs For the unfamiliar, trying to figure out what's going on at a Melt-Banana live show is sort of like trying to transcribe the gibberish conversations of your characters in The Sims. It's really confusing and unproductive.

Sing your life Charles Spearin's Happiness Project — to be performed this Friday at the Middle East Downstairs as part of a trio of Torontonian acts — was originally just that: a project.

Fresh legends Nine out of 10 rap legends prefer People Under the Stairs. (The holdout is a crackhead.) That's no joke — in my hundreds of interviews with dudes who brought the noise and funk before the big ship sunk ( circa 1997), California underground heroes Thes One and Double K have been as popular a subject as the exploitation of old-school luminaries.

Oddballs Even if they had closed up shop 15 years ago, the Residents would go down as some of rock's most prolific pranksters. They aped the Beatles on their 1974 debut, Meet the Residents , tormented short attention spans with 40-minute songs on 1980's The Commercial Album , and skewered standards by everyone from James Brown to John Philip Sousa along the way.

Arty crashers Fucked Up's career is a game of dares they're winning. Over the past few years, the Toronto band have trashed a bathroom on an MTV broadcast, played a 12-hour set in a NYC boutique, reeled in random notables like David Cross, Bob Mould, and Nelly Furtado for Christmas charity singles, landed their vocalist Pink Eyes appearances on Fox News, and won the 2009 Polaris Music Prize.

High On Fire | Snakes For The Divine Joining a metal band as a young 'un is a bit like getting hired as a burger flipper: you may dream of one day becoming Ray Kroc, but after years of toil, grease, and ridicule, you'll probably settle for store manager.

Xiu Xiu | Dear God, I Hate Myself The reigning King of Discomfort, Jamie Stewart, and his new bandmate, Angela Seo (who took Cold Caveward–bound Caralee McElroy's place last year), recently released a video for this album's title track in which Seo forces herself to puke in front of the camera.

Lady killer Since the only way to write about female rappers is to harp on gender, here's the catchy kick-paragraph buzznote that we're playing: Dessa has more in common with black Republicans than you might realize. Although she's proud to hail from Venus, the poetic Minnesota songstress has refused to let prejudice paralyze her rise in a male-weighted industry.

The other side of heavy Loving heavy rock is a two-step process. Step one is easy: you hear something heavier than you've ever heard before, and you realize, "This is my thing." Step two is a little trickier: you wonder, "What is 'heavy'?" If you can accept the idea that a certain set of limitations leads to ultimate heaviosity, then — kudos! — you are a metalhead.

NO REST FOR BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD | March 13, 2013 Blackbird Blackbird's 2012 EP Boracay Planet takes its name from two sources: Boracay — a beach-filled, postcard-perfect island in the Philippines — and a dream Mikey Maramag had about the tourist trap, despite never having visited.

THE LUMINEERS AIM FOR THE RAFTERS | February 01, 2013 Jeremiah Fraites isn't famous — at least not yet. The drummer of the Lumineers, the folk trio who experienced an outrageously fruitful 2012, is talking to me two days before appearing on the January 19 Saturday Night Live, but he doesn't sound convinced that his band have crossed the fame threshold.

PHANTOM GLUE COME INTO FOCUS | January 23, 2013 Variations of "nightmarish" and "psychedelic" come up repeatedly as Matt Oates describes his band's work — which makes sense, given that Phantom Glue trace their roots back to Slayer, the Jesus Lizard, and cult post-hardcore act KARP.